


there's a clearing in the forest

by bluexshift



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, Paul Stamets-centric, This is, there is a brief bit of dialogue from hugh and tilly but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 00:10:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12715752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluexshift/pseuds/bluexshift
Summary: paul sees so many beautiful things now, the way he can see the universes





	there's a clearing in the forest

**Author's Note:**

> just a short drabble about the things paul can see now
> 
> takes place after 1x09 and before 1x10

he’s falling.

he’s falling he’s falling he’s falling he’s falling

he’s flying.

he cannot remember his name.

he knows he has one, knows he must, but what is the point of giving brain space to remembering a name when there are infinite universes to catalogue? a name is irrelevant when you traverse the stars within a heartbeat. an identity, the individual, can get so lost with the expanse of eternity before them.

his name is paul.

still. irrelevant.

nebulae swirl around him one minute, breathing life into the dullest, the most average, the brightest stars. he loves every single one. the next minutes he stands at their graves, at the side of white dwarfs and red giants, and he dances in supernovae, delights in the destructive death.

things die. they live, they die, they live again, they die again.

he wonders if it’s possible for him to die, now. he never believed in a soul before, still doesn’t, but his consciousness is separate now. can it survive without him?

he wonders if he’s even still human. the beauty of existence distracts him from the thought.

he swims with the mycelium, and feels free. colours he could never have imagined seeing, stuck as he was in a four dimensional form, dazzle him, the music of life and death, creation and destruction, soothing him as he goes.

the winds carry him, ebbing and flowing, ebbing, and flowing, from his body to the edge, the hem of the fabric of spacetime.

_“i’m not leaving his side, tilly.”_

he remembers his hugh.

paul stamets straddles the line between presence and omnipresence.

he is always awake, but never quite conscious.

_“he won’t be alone, dr culber, i promise, i’ll be here. you should get some rest, you look, um, awful. sorry.”_

he remembers his husband, knows he’s probably shaking his head, smiling a soft smile and his tired eyes twinkling. he sees galaxies up close now, but didn’t he always see them anyway, see them all reflected in his lover’s eyes?

“ _it’s not about him being alone. it’s about me being there with him. i made a promise to be by his side, for better or worse. wherever his mind is, i can’t follow, so i’ll sit, with him, and wait for him to come home. however long it takes”_

_“i understand, sir. can i get_ you _anything, then?”_

_“i’d kill for a coffee. replicator’s a bust down here.”_

paul stamets smiles, and loses himself to the cosmos once more.

he always was an explorer.

 


End file.
